Editor’s Note: TechCrunch columnist Semil Shah currently works at Votizen and is based in Palo Alto. You can follow him on Twitter @semil

“In the Studio” opens its doors this week to one of Silicon Valley’s most quietly active venture capitalists who, after years working in technology operations for major networking companies, a stint with an Asian telecom giant, and nearly a decade investing in mobile, gaming, digital media, and networking companies, is paying particular attention to the implications of big data and the potential opportunities they create.

For the past decade, Ping Li has been investing in across a broad range of technology companies with Accel Partners, where he is a general partner. Since their defining Series A investment in Facebook, the firm has been on a roll, opening offices in New York City and expanding its footprint overseas, all while maintaining their anchor in the middle of Palo Alto’s University Avenue. And, over the past few years, Accel has also developed an interest in “big data.”

The term “big data” is thrown around often in conversation or at tech conferences, but despite the generalizations and hype, significant opportunities exist for entrepreneurs and investors alike. Last year, I attempted to analyze how big data impacted the consumer web and concluded that while opportunities were abundant, very few were in a positions to capitalize on them given the scarcity of talent in these specific areas of the consumer web.

Li and his partners at Accel are certainly looking at big data as it applies to consumer products — the massive amounts of unstructured social data we are all generating through social media and applications, waiting to be harvested. On the enterprise side of things, however, Li believes big data is on the verge of going mainstream, where datasets and analytical tools will soon be available to everyone, igniting new waves of innovation that could disrupt major public companies from the platform all the way to the application layer.

In this conversation, Li shares his views on the big data landscape and also offers subtle advice to potential founders looking into the space. Having the benefit to see many big data technologies and applications over the past few years, he has developed a keen sense of what minefields founders need to look out for when creating these technologies. To take things a step further, Li and his partners at Accel launched a $100M Big Data Fund, invested in creating an ecosystem of academics, technologists, and thought-leaders, and are hosting a private conference at Stanford on May 9 on this topic (technologists working on big data who would like to attend can contact Accel directly through the conference site).

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Discovery. That’s a big part of the role social commerce plays in the overall social media marketing meets sales mix. Every industry player I talk to – and I’ve talked to many, both on the brand side and platform vendor side – mentions the term.

Simply defined, discovery is the process for helping customers find new products that they may not have been aware of, and for sites as large as Zappos with its 136,000+ SKUs, discovery is an especially huge issue. That’s why it created a discovery tool called TweetWall.

According TweetWall creator Alice Han, the tool was designed to let Zappos’ customers know “what are people tweeting about right now. It creates a fun way to see what may be trending or what may just be an odd item we carry that’s a fun conversation starter.”

Visitors can browse through the TweetWall image gallery and see product tweets as they are posted in real-time. Users can tweet their own thoughts to see those featured on the wall, as well.

In terms of the interface, what’s one thing you notice? Does the word Pinterest come to mind? Yep, TweetWall (like just about every other site today) has co-opted Pinterest’s visually-oriented graphic design. It’s warm and friendly and, hey, a picture paints a thousand words, right?

TweetWall is not all that Zappos is up to when it comes to social commerce, especially in its “what people are talking about right now” iteration. The company has its own app development laboratory focused on building more, and that includes such things as a Facebook Order Sharing app, which allows your friends to see and interact with your latest Zappos purchase. There’s even an app that lets you see the weather in your area so you’ll know which of Zappos products to wear!

Starting years ago with CEO Tony Hsieh’s @Zappos channel, Zappos was one of the first companies to use Twitter as a social commerce tool. TweetWall is just the latest in its evolution – this time around with a focus on product discovery.

What This Means for Brands

There are three areas in which brands should place a focus:

Discovery – In a very insightful guest post at Forbes, Brian Ficho, CEO of social commerce site oBaz.com said this about discovery: “[W]hen properly executed, [discovery] is about helping consumers find stuff they didn’t even know existed. It begins by encouraging customers to offer information about their interests using a variety of techniques that deal in the individual’s self-interest, from games and metaphors to direct feedback. Moreover, discovery is an ongoing process, one that is continually refined over time to generate relevance at deeper levels regardless of how the person’s interests change.”

Real-Time – The web is real-time and all the time. I recall the brilliant web analytist Jeremiah Owyang saying years ago that “real time is not fast enough.” In terms of discovery, people want access to information immediately and expeditiously.

Interface Design – There’s a reason more and more sites, including Facebook, have transitioned from a text-based orientation to one that stimulates more visual interest. Reverse chronological ordering of content is tired and overused. Conversely, Pinterest’s use of an image-centric, non-linear interface is the new, cool way to do design and is the methodology mimicked by TweetWall.

In what ways can your brand take advantage of this amalgam of real-time discovery via a graphic interface? What other implications does Zappos TweetWall hold for brands that wish to engage more effectively in social commerce?

Article courtesy of Social Commerce Today

If you’re waiting in the queue for Google’s Real Time Analytics Beta, we’ve got good news… and we’ve got bad news. The good news: Google has just let in another big round of participants, so odds aren’t too shabby that you’re in. The bad news: they mixed up their “To:” field and their “BCC:” field on the welcome e-mail.

We’re not going to post the list of addresses for obvious reasons — but all in all, I’m counting just shy of 500 addresses spilled. If you’re worried you’re in there somewhere, check your inbox for an e-mail titled “Welcome to the beta trial for Real-Time Analytics!”, then check the To: field for about 495 too many people.

It’s unclear if this is the entire list of folks finding their way into the Analytics Beta today, or if the e-mails were sent out in batches of around ~500 recipients each. If it’s the latter, hopefully this is the only one with the BCC slip-up.

Fortunately, the implications of mistakes like this usually aren’t too nasty. Everyone will get a few dozen e-mails as people jokingly reply-all with pictures of animals, a few tweets singing “Privacy Fail!” will go out, but everyone generally moves on pretty quickly. If you’ve applied to the beta and you’ve got an e-mail address you prefer to keep 100% private, though, you might consider switching it up.

You know, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a good ol’ fashion BCC fail. The last one I recall, actually, was our bad. As Mike put it at the time, “we can never make fun of anyone doing this again without pointing back to this post.“

We’ve reached out to Google to try and pin down how many e-mail addresses could have found their way out. We’ll update this post if we hear back.

Update #1 - Google has apologized quickly. Good on them:

Hi,

We recently sent out an email welcoming you to real time analytics. Inadvertently, we put the email addresses in the To: field instead of the BCC: field. We want to sincerely apologize for this mistake and will make sure that this does not happen again. Thank you for your understanding.

On Behalf of the Google Real-Time Analytics Team.

Update #2 – Hah! The recipients of the e-mail have already formed a Facebook group they’ve dubbed “The Accidental brothers of Real-time Awesomeness“

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Stealth motion control startup OcuSpec has just raised a $1.3 million seed round from Andreesen Horowitz, Founders Fund, SOSventures International and angels Brian McClendon, Bill Warner and others.

Short and sweet in his emails, founder Michael Buckwald isn’t telling me very much about OcuSpec does, other than the fact that the startup is developing motion controlled technology that is “radically more powerful and affordable than anything currently available.”

From what I’ve gathered it will be sort of like a poor man’s Kinect, except that it will work across any platform. Lest you think this is a pipe dream, the startup currently has functional demo units that can track movement from a user’s hands and body, allowing 3D motion control to be embedded in anything from a laptop to a TV. Cool.

Says Buckwald, “Obviously our technology has big ramifications for gaming but we’re particularly excited about the implications that ubiquitous motion control has for the broader computing experience and content creation. ” Not to mention the exercise video industry.

Buckwald and his former NASA engineer co-founder David Holtz will be using the newfound cash to hire more people and expand their “already extensive” patent portfolio. Sounds promising.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, which means there’s a decent chance you’re about to zone out in front of the television for the next several hours. But before you do that, why not tune in to the latest episode of OMG/JK — where my colleague MG Siegler and I discuss the surprise calls and bone-crushing, competitive maneuvers taking place on the gridiron of Silicon Valley. See, I know football lingo!

Anyway, it’s been a big week in mobile: MG is now able to make phone calls using his Verizon iPhone (which will be released to consumers this week). We also got our first chance to try out Android Honeycomb, as well as Google’s web-based Android Market. And, finally, we discuss Apple’s decision to block Sony’s E-Reader application, and what the implications are for Amazon’s Kindle platform.

• TechCrunch Review: The Name’s iPhone. Verizon iPhone.
• First Impressions Using Android Honeycomb, Google’s iPad Rival
• Google Unveils Android Market Webstore. It’s Already Live!
• Apple Reportedly Blocks Sony Reader App, May Foreshadow War With Amazon Kindle
• Apple: Nothing Has Changed. Except For This One Thing.

Subscribe to us on iTunes!

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Probably sick of countless press emails asking for an official stance on the countless controversial hyper-mediated events like WikiLeaks and the Tunisan and Egyptian uprisings now being amplified through Twitter, co-founder Biz Stone and Twitter General Council Alexander Macgillivray have co-written the polemic “The Tweets Must Flow” essentially arguing that freedom of expression is a human right.

Key takeways:

*“On a practical level, we simply cannot review all one hundred million-plus Tweets created and subsequently delivered every day.”

*“We keep the information flowing irrespective of any view we may have about the content.”

*“While we may need to release information as required by law, we try to notify Twitter users before handing over their information whenever we can.”

*We’re hiring.

Stone and Macgillivray did not explicitly mention any one particular incident in the post but obviously hinted at recent news events with pointed language like “some tweets may facilitate positive change in a repressed country,” (Tunisia, Egypt) and “While we may need to release information as required by law, we try to notify Twitter users before handing over their information whenever we can” (which is exactly what the company did recently when the DOJ asked for data from WikiLeaks supporters).

Emphasizing Twitter’s transparency, Stone and Macgillivray state that Twitter has been submitting all tweet removal notices to @ChillingEffects which is releasing them through @ChillFirehose. @ChillingEffects is a project lead by the EFF, Harvard, Stanford and other universities meant to raise awareness of online rights and protections with regards to copyright issue, etc . They also mention that Twitter has a Twitter list devoted to “Freedom of Expression” which includes the ACLU, IP Justice and internet monitoring service Herdict.

Twitter’s Sean Garrett tells us that the post is the result of a year of mulling over important geo-political issues that Twitter is now an unlikely player in, “We thought it important for us to explain our principles for both big things like being blocked in China to much more specific decisions like a DMCA request over a single Tweet. Recent big global events vividly demonstrate the implications of this approach.”

Indeed, the Twitter legal team now lead by Macgillivray has found itself in all sorts of unprecedented legal situations as the service scales, anything from a Courtney Love libel suit to a subpoena from the Pennsylvania Attorney General.

Biz Stone has written on Twitter and activism before, in response to Malcom Galdwell’s assertion that there is no such thing as  Twitter activism (I can’t wait to see what Gladwell has to say about the past two weeks). And while this is the first time I’ve seen Macgillvray write on Twitter issues, something tells me it won’t be the last.

.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

This is just getting silly. Yesterday, we reported on a new Chrome extension created by a developer that allowed you to scrape your Facebook contact information. Called “Facebook Doesn’t Own My Friends,” the extension provided a workaround to import your friends contact information on Facebook into Gmail and CSV files. As we noted in our post, the extension was taken down shortly after our story went up. The exporter is still down, and it’s unclear who has actually taken the exporter down, but the implications are clear. The only companies that will provide these technologies are Facebook and Google, and this will probably involve a peace treaty of some sort.

So what got us to this dark place where ten minutes after the workaround was posted on TechCrunch, it was taken down? Nearly a month ago, Google began blocking Facebook API access to download Google contacts. Facebook hacked its way around that, and Google subsequently issued a statement that they were “disappointed”. Facebook Platform engineer Mike Vernal then responded in the comments of one of our blog posts about the slap fight, defending Facebook’s policy and calling it “consistent”.

A few weeks ago, Google started posting a warning to users who tried to import their Gmail contact to Facebook, effectively saying that your contacts information will be effectively trapped inside Facebook without the ability to re-export the data. It seemed that the message was somehow blocked because the “warning” subsequently disappeared when you tried to export your Gmail data.

Then last week, Facebook started removing the Gmail option from the list of third party email providers on “Find Friends.” The Gmail option was also removed on Facebook-owned FriendFeed.

What’s so confusing about this back and forth, passive-aggressive brouhaha is that it’s unclear which company is initiating each action. Both companies have remained fairly tight-lipped about the issue.

The key part of all this is reciprocity—Google feels that since they are providing the ability to export Gmail contact data to Facebook, Facebook should allow Gmail users to do the same.

The thing is that reciprocity is an issue that affects relationships between major countries. Whether it be over tariffs, law enforcement or immigration policies, countries and states deal with reciprocity daily. Often times, agreements are finally made through treaties.

For now, this rigmarole has continued for nearly two months-is it time for a peace treaty between Google and Facebook?

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

How important were technology issues in last week’s Congressional election? Not very – at least according to Bruce Mehlman, the former Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Technology Policy in the George W. Bush administration and a prominent Washington DC based Republican expert on technology policy.

As Mehlman, who is currently Executive Director of the Technology CEO Council and Co-Chairman of the Internet Innovation Alliance, joked with me when we Skyped last week, there were probably about “ten voters” whose vote last week was influenced by technology concerns.

But while the election wasn’t shaped by technology issues, decisions made in Washington DC over the next two years will inevitably shape the technology industry. Challenges such as national broadband policy, the future of network neutrality legislation, protection of intellectual property rights and of individual privacy on the Internet could all become major political issues over the next two years. Moreover, as Mehlman made clear to me, the strength of the American economy is so dependent on innovation in technology that a healthy tech sector is essential for the long-term prosperity of this country.

My interview with the Republican Mehlman is the first in a two part series on the implications of last week’s election on technology policy. Tomorrow, we will run a parallel conversation with the Democrat David Sutphen, Mehlman’s co-chair at the Internet Innovation Alliance and a prominent technology and civil rights advocate.

The impact of last week’s election on technology policy in general

The future of network neutrality legislation

How America can climb up the global broadband league table

Will privacy be the next big political issue in Washington DC?

How Obama can win back Silicon Valley

The threat of piracy to the U.S. economy

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Parts of Europe have been, for whatever reason, more wary of Google’s Street View service than others. The occasional lawsuit hasn’t prevented the march of progress, though Italy’s new regulations may cause more of a hassle than the occasional grumpy homeowner. The Privacy Authority President, Francesco Pizzetti, described the outrage:

“There has been strong alarm and also hostility in a lot of European countries against Google taking photos. We have received protests even from local administrations.”

Odd that a country so heavily invested in their tourist industry, which consists largely of foreign people taking millions of photos of the country’s most previous possessions, would take issue with the far more systematic and predictable Street View operations. Considering their handling of that other incident, it seems that perhaps the Italian government is simply not equipped to deal progressively with the implications and consequences of the internet and Google in particular.

Continue reading…

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Bloomberg reports that Facebook is to – probably – put off an eventual IPO until at least 2012, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

Waiting at least another year (and a half, approximately, to be clear) would reportedly give CEO Mark Zuckerberg more time to follow through on his vision without too much public scrutiny and the implications thereof, attract more users and developers, book more sales and work out other issues, such as the user privacy kerfuffle and legal matters.

All this talk about Facebook going public at some time reminds me of similar chatter that has surrounded professional social networking company LinkedIn for years. In both cases, founders and management have repeatedly stated they’ll only IPO when the time is right, and repeatedly expressed that gaining more users and ramping up revenues are the current focus.

And in both cases, media outlets continue to speculate about when they’ll go public anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, both are bound to IPO at some point, and they’ll be high-profile and plenty impactful events. But my assumption is that for both Facebook and LinkedIn, the people who are to make said decision really do want to wait for when the time is right, and they most probably have clear milestones in mind to determine when that is.

It’s hard to predict the future, so it’s near impossible to determine when exactly those milestones will be met and everything falls into place, provided one would even know what the ideal situation in the minds of the decision makers is. Investors and other equity holders, e.g. employees, obviously want to cash in at some point, and secondary markets aren’t going to keep appeasing them in the long run. So yes, there’s going to be pressure, and increasingly so.

But who knows what will happen between now and, say, the next three years? Even if Bloomberg’s sources are extremely familiar with Zuckerberg’s thinking and plans, they too don’t know how quickly Facebook will grow, or what other events might on the other hand make Facebook want to delay an eventual IPO until 2013 or later, even.

It’s fun to speculate, but these reports need to taken at face value as such.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch